She turned to Mick, blinked and took a deep, resigned breath: ‘We started going out three years ago, in 1988. I used to meet him in his room at the home. He lived in staff accommodation at the time. He came to my twenty-second birthday party at my house and met my family. We went for drinks. We took up classes together, weight training and aerobics.’

‘Christ,’ chuckled Shep, ‘I’d have thought he got enough weight training and aerobics humping that lump.’

‘How would you describe your relationship at that time?’

‘We was girlfriend and boyfriend, you know? That’s how I introduced him to my family. That’s how he introduced me at the classes, as his girlfriend.’

‘Did you not find it strange that he was never available at weekends?’

Karen shrugged.

‘And when did you learn that he was in a relationship with Marion?’

‘They threw an engagement party for them at the home.’

‘That would have been, let me see, almost two years ago, in June 1989? How did you react?’

‘I was furious. I didn’t speak to him for months.’

‘Did you resume your relationship with Pete after this?’

‘After the wedding in June last year, he told me that he’d made a mistake, and that he didn’t love Marion. He loved me.’

‘So you resumed your affair with Pete?’

She nodded.

‘I need you to answer the question for the tape recorder,’ said Colin, gently.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I realised he was lying to me and using me. The night of his birthday, in December last year, he tried it on with me and I refused. I ended it.’

‘So when was the last time you had sex with Pete?’

‘November last year. Nine months ago. By then I’d got to know Marion and I liked her. We became good mates. We went to the pub. I baked a cake for her birthday. I helped them move out of the home. By the end of last year I hated Pete and thought Marion deserved better.’

Colin laughed: ‘It was Marion you hated really, wasn’t it, for standing in the way of you and the man you loved?’

‘I didn’t love him. I was angry and hurt. But that was last year. Like I said, I became friends with Marion and stopped seeing Pete.’

‘It can’t have been easy, Karen, especially when Marion moved into Pete’s room after the wedding, seeing them together, happy. The man of your dreams married and in love with someone else.’

Karen darkened.

‘You went to the room next to theirs to eavesdrop. This sounds to me like you were obsessed with Pete. I think that you remained obsessed with Pete. I think this obsession turned into a murderous hatred. Of Marion.’

Karen muttered something to her brief and folded her arms. ‘My client does not want to make any further comment at this time,’ he announced.

Mick told the tape recorder they were stopping for a break. We reassembled in the kitchen.

‘I tell you what, for a fat bird, she’s lively on her feet,’ said Shep, ‘she gambled that we only knew about them having sex last year. I bet he carried on screwing her, right up until the murder.’

‘The trouble is we have no evidence that the affair continued after November last year,’ said Mick.

‘And she’s clamming up,’ added Colin, ‘she’s probably guessed that her best bet now is to keep her trap shut.’

Shep checked his watch: ‘I’ll make sure we get a twenty-four-hour custody extension, let the bitch stew for a day. By the time we finish with Lover Boy tomorrow, we’ll have enough to charge her with perverting the course of justice. That should open her up a treat.’

Chapter 26

Trinity Road, South London

Tuesday, August 13, 1991; 19:00

‘I’m at the Wheatsheaf, Eve x’ read the Post-it note on my flat door that evening. I wondered how she got inside the building’s front door.

I studied that ‘x’ for clues. It looked very neat, very formal. I wondered what it meant, if it meant anything at all. What did she really want? Me? Fintan? Neither of us? The other evening at the Archway had been a disaster. The whole night felt as if the three of us had regressed to 1988, or before.

I walked into the pub and scanned the tables. I met her smile in the very far corner: had she been watching the door? Butterflies that had been dead for years rose for a fluttery circuit of my chest.

She looked pretty, if a little formal: skirt, blouse and suit jacket, ready for business. I walked to the bar, gesturing if she’d like another. She nodded, toasting me with another smile. God knows how many gin and tonics (lime not lemon) I’d bankrolled the other night.

As our drinks were being poured, I glanced over and caught her looking at me. We shared bashful smiles and I wondered why your first love remains special after you’d forgotten all others. I suppose aged sixteen or seventeen, you don’t believe anyone could really actually love you. Not in a sexual way. Maybe your first love helps you learn to love yourself.

I wanted to tell her all of this, but said instead: ‘Well, how’s the head?’

‘Still fragile,’ she husked in a voice that made Lauren Bacall sound like Mammy Two Shoes out of Tom and Jerry.

‘Listen, I meant to say the other night, it’s great to see you.’ And I meant it. ‘I was just a bit shocked, and half cut …’

I scolded myself for the unwitting knife pun. She didn’t seem to notice.

‘I did try to let Fintan know I was coming to London. I left God knows how many messages but he never got back. Do you think he’s okay with me? He seemed very … cold would you say?’

‘I didn’t think so,’ I lied.

‘Now I’m not newsworthy I don’t think he gives a shit,’ Eve spat.

I was shocked by her sudden change of tone. Underneath that sombre brown bob still lurked a volatile redhead.

She saw the alarm in my face and quickly changed tack: ‘Well, Detective Constable, have you cracked that case yet?’

We weren’t supposed to discuss live cases with anyone, but I couldn’t help myself. Especially the part about me unearthing Marion’s damning letter to her friend.

‘Wow, you’re quite the Columbo aren’t you?’ she teased. I laughed it off, wondering why no one ever compared me to a sexy detective.

For the rest of the night, I sat back and let Eve take me on a languorous, drink-fuelled trawl through the lives and times of our contemporaries.

Some sort of unspecified Catholic guilt prevented us getting straight down to the sweet schadenfreude of other people’s misfortunes. Instead, Eve kicked off with a few success stories: someone’s brother scouted by United; Fidelma Daly landing a role in a daytime soap; a guy we barely knew inheriting a fortune from some great uncle in Canada. But the really interesting news invariably involved downfall and ruin: babies popping out, students dropping out and people coming out.

I was surprised by the number of girls back home who’d fallen pregnant, clearly without planning to. I wondered how many more had undergone secret abortions in England, like Tara Molloy, the girl I’d unwittingly chaperoned to a clinic in Stepney. Mind you, in late Eighties Tullamore, it was easier to get hold of Semtex than a pack of Jonnies. Women had to beg their inevitably God-fearing, pro-life GP to go on the pill. So Eve and I went without. We did everything but. Why play the Russian roulette of unprotected sex? Yet I couldn’t help thinking now: were they all at it, all along, hammer and tongs, except us?

Some of the pregnancies resulted in shotgun weddings, usually in Rome. One couple compounded their degenerate behaviour by ‘living in sin’, forcing their hard-line religious families to disown them. As Fintan says: ‘He sure moves in mysterious ways.’ But most of the ‘fallen’ young mums were staying with their families. I was amazed to hear that none of the dads had scarpered, at least not yet. I couldn’t help thinking what a life these young parents faced now, trapped in a town with few job opportunities, playing second fiddle to a child they didn’t want, beholden for the rest of their lives to some man/woman they’d shagged a few times, unable to meet someone else because they were ‘damaged goods with baggage’, forever under the thumb of the child’s maternal grandparents. But that was the Irish way. You didn’t run away. You made your bed. Pain was your penance.